Wayward Sons
by Cheryl W
Summary: A case hits a little too close to home for Neal. No Slash.


Wayward Sons

Author: Cheryl W.

Disclaimer: I do not own Neal, or Peter or any rights to White Collar, nor am I making any profit from this story.

Author's Note: This is dedicated to CrashDisaster! It's a humble thank you for your faith in me. And thank you so much for the wonderful welcome I got into the WC fanfic arena from all my reviewers! This is just a short angsty/sappy one shot set in Season 2 sometime after the break.

Summary: A case hits a little too close to home for Neal. No Slash.

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Peter wouldn't understand, he had never understood. And most days, that was Ok with Neal. Today it wasn't.

"Are you sulking? 'Cause doing the silent treatment isn't helping," Peter snapped, giving his CI a sharp look. A look that Neal probably didn't notice since his head was turned and his eyes were on the rain soaked world outside the passenger side of the Ford.

Neal didn't bother replying, was, in fact sulking. He was doing more than that. He was pissed and hurt and….feeling very alone, lost. Kate would have known what was bothering him. Mozzie would have coaxed it out of him. Alex would have just stayed at his side, let him tell her in his own time. But they were all gone. Had left him, had been taken from him. Peter was all he had left, Peter and an ankle accessory.

Worry crept into Peter. Neal wasn't acting like Neal, was withdrawn, was _hurting. _He didn't know why or how to make it better, how to help. But he wanted to help Neal, had had that urge often, had even had that urge even as the kid lead him on a merry chase across three continents. Now, after getting to know Neal, not the brash conman, not the smooth criminal, not the brilliant escape artist, but the _real _Neal, he found that he hurt when Neal hurt. He had been there when Kate had died, when Alex had left, when Mozzie had….Well, he knew all that Neal had gone through, how deep his friend's pain ran.

But this, today, he didn't know where it was coming from.

Peter's tone was gentle when he spoke again. "Hey, I didn't see it coming either. Guy's slick," his eyes flickering from road to partner and back to road. But Neal didn't react, remained hunched in the corner of the car, like he wanted to fade away, such a heartrending contrast to the man's usual cockiness.

That was all Peter had, was the only opening line he could come up with. He wracked his brain the remainder of the trip back to Neal's residence. When he stopped the car, Neal was springing out the door before he could put the car in park, invite himself up for a drink. The door slammed and he watched Neal walk toward June's front door, no hurry in his stride as he became soaked to the bone in the downpour before he slipped inside, disappeared from sight.

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Dripping wet, head down, Neal climbed the stairs to his room, felt the weight settle heavier on his shoulders now that he was out from under Peter's scrutiny, that Peter's comforting presence was no longer there to keep the memories at bay. Numbly he entered his room and shut the door. Then… He. Just. Stopped. Became one of the statues he once carved, wished someone could carve out his insides, make the memories go away, the pain.

Peter was off base. What bothered him wasn't that the thief bested them today. No, it was the life the young thief had once had. A life so similar to his own. Boy scouts, soccer camp, a majority of A's gracing his report cards, a life so….content. Then, somehow, it all fell apart. Put him on a path he could never have fathomed. It changed him. Forever. And there was no going back, was no way to reform him, to undoing the hurt, to unlearn the stark truth: He couldn't live the life that others did. He didn't fit there, didn't trust that life. He, of all people, knew how quickly it could crumble in your hands, no matter how tightly you clung to it.

'_Happiness, safety, they are illusions. I should have remembered that, never should have thought Kate and I could have that, would have that. How could I believe that I could change my last name and with it, change the whims of fate. Could build a counterfeit life and pretend that it was the real thing_.' Suddenly, he hated himself because, with sharp clarity, he saw the hundred ways that he had let his guard down, had doomed Kate and everyone else that had gotten close to him. In the end, he had ended up hurting all the people that he thought could insulate him against pain, against fear, against loneliness.

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Peter didn't knock, wanted to catch Neal off guard, to come at the younger man at an angle the conman wouldn't predict, wouldn't know how to defend himself from. Because, Neal was his friend, and he didn't have many of them. In fact, Neal was practically the whole tally. And that meant that he wasn't going to stand by and let Neal drown in pain, not again.

Neal didn't turn around when he had opened the door. At the sight of his friend's rigid, frozen stance, Peter halted on the room's threshold, felt his brisk greeting fleeing at his friend's obvious distress. He jumped when Neal swung his fist through the glass pane of the door leading out to the patio.

The pain felt…good, right. Neal watched the blood ooze from his hand in sick satisfaction.

Crossing the distance between he and Neal at a run, Peter latched onto Neal's wrist, didn't relinquish his grip when Neal jerked back in surprise, tried to get free. "What are you doing?" Peter shouted, fear and anger converging within as he assessed the damage, felt his own hand becoming slick with blood, Neal's blood.

"Let me go!" Neal ordered, shoving Peter away, breaking the man's hold on his hand, trying to break the hold the older man had on his life.

Reeling from the shock of not only Neal's self abuse but at the younger man's physical attack on him, Peter stood still, raised his hands as if he were talking to a violate suspect but, his tone, it carried a deep, earnest level of worry, worry for Neal. "Whoa. Easy. I just came up to make sure you're alright and …well, apparently you're not."

"I'm fine," Neal snapped back, retreating two steps when Peter straightened his stance, looked as if he would reach for him again.

"Sure, the bleeding thing's just for show, right?" Peter tried for a lightness he didn't feel, not when his best friend was standing there, blood dripping onto June's expensive hard wood flooring.

Self consciously, Neal dropped his hand to his side, as if removing it from Peter's line of sight would make the FBI agent forget about it. "So I cut myself. It's no big deal."

And this side of Neal, the angry, defensive, self harming side of his young friend, Peter had never seen it before. It scared him, put more fear in him than 90% of the criminals that he had faced off with ever could. This was personal, affected him, threatened the world he knew, the world he liked, a world that included a large portion of Neal Caffery in it.

Drawing his look from the bleeding appendage, Peter met Neal's eyes, knew this negotiation was as important as any in his career. Neal, his friendship with Neal was at stake. "I'm not good with this," he quietly admitted, chagrinned, regret in his tone. "I can tell when you're about to do something reckless, go off the reservation but this….what you're feeling…I don't know that. Not without you telling me."

"You an FBI shrink now?" Neal derogatorily shot back, wasn't giving any grounds for Peter's earnestness.

Peter flinched at the tone, honestly didn't like conflict with the people he loved. And, somewhere along the way, Neal Caffery had become one of them. Neal was like a younger brother Peter hadn't had the privilege of growing up with, sometimes even felt like the son that he and Elizabeth always talked about having one day. But Peter was tenacious, as tenacious as Neal. He didn't give up on something he wanted, on someone that he cared about.

Peter forced himself to chuckle. "No. I'm not hiding any ink blots in my briefcase." The slight shift in Neal's stance? That was a victory of sorts, meant Neal wasn't as defensive as he was a minute ago.

Peter took advantage of the small softening in Neal, stepped forward. Neal didn't retreat, remained stock still but his eyes didn't leave his, were reading him like a living, breathing lie detector. Pulling his focus from Neal's too pained gaze, he dropped his eyes to Neal's blood coated hand. Keeping his curse internal, he snagged a cloth napkin off the table and stepped to Neal's side. Gently he raised the injured hand. His visual inspection and feather light prodding allowed him to catalogue the severity of the wounds before he proceeded to wrap the napkin around Neal's hand with urgent but careful motions. "We need to get you to a hospital."

"No," Neal defied, using the same harsh tone he had during the boiler case, when he was certain that Peter had betrayed him.

Not sure what he had done to make Neal question his intentions toward him, Peter met Neal's stubborn blue eyes with resolve of his own. "Well to bad. I'm not going to let you bleed out, Neal." He would throw the young man over his shoulders if he had to, would not let Neal's wound go untreated, the one on the outside…or the one on the inside.

"Because that would generate a lot of paperwork, right?" Neal bitterly repeated a sarcastic comment Peter had said long ago.

A comment that Peter had not meant, even then, at the beginning of their partnership.

Peter tilted his head in confusion, felt like a man tossed into a raging sea unable to determine which direction to swim for a port in the storm. "No. Because you're my _partner_, my **friend**. Have you missed the part where I've put my career on the line for you, time after time."

"Well you can stop. Right now," Neal sharply retorted, a challenge in his eyes as they seared into Peter's, into his friend's suddenly pained gaze.

Peter swallowed, tried to shut down his own fear, to quiet his panic, to find a way to reach Neal before the man disappeared right in front of him, became a stranger he couldn't reach. "Yeah, well, I don't want to," he heatedly declared, was rewarded with Neal's shocked, wide eyed reaction. "And I'm not going to go away, to pretend I don't know that you're hurting. If you don't want to talk, that's fine. It's your choice, I know that. But we're going to get your hand seen to and, if you want off this case, I'll get it reassigned to someone else."

Now it was Neal's turn for confusion. "Wait, you would walk away from the case? You told Hughes that you wanted to get this kid, badly."

'_Not badly enough to watch you hurt_,' Peter thought, said aloud, "Sometimes things get too personal. You're a prime example of that."

Shame crept into Neal's features. "I know…I shouldn't be reacting.."

"Not your reaction. Mine," Peter quickly clarified, couldn't help smile weakly at Neal's rising confusion. "I thought about walking away from your case …oh I don't know… a thousand times."

"Why?" Neal asked, his voice raw, uncertain if he could endure the pain that Peter's answer might bring.

Sensing the returning tension in Neal, Peter settled on the entire truth, found he trusted Neal with it. "Because I came to admire you, to like you. Because we were on first name basis by the end of the first year. Because I started to doubt…." Peter fell silent, hadn't ever contemplated voicing this, to anyone.

"Started to doubt what?" Neal prompted, couldn't fathom Peter doubting anything back then.

"That I _wanted_ to catch you," Peter confessed, saw the way it rocked his young friend. "But what was worse was the thought that, if I walked away, if someone else took on your case…" He halted again. He didn't know how he had come to be telling this, admitting this, but as his eyes dropped, as he realized that he still held Neal's hand in his own, that Neal's blood was starting to soak through the cloth napkin, he abandoned his pretenses, spoke what was in his heart. Raising his eyes, he met Neal's haunted gaze head on. "I knew I couldn't live with myself if someone else took on your case and decided that it was easier to shoot you then chase you across the world. I might have objected to you being sentenced to a maximum security prison but even that was better than you being dead."

With Peter's words, Neal's entire demeanor changed. Abandoning his feral instinct to attack when a perceived threat loomed, Neal stammered, "Peter I…I don't know what to say."

"And I don't know what to say to you today," Peter quietly admitted. "I don't know what's going through your head, Neal." '_What you need from me_.' Pausing, he exhaled. "This case, I don't know the buttons it's pushing in you. But this kid…he's made choices you would never make. Ever."

Neal's eyes filled and Peter's breath caught as Neal's brokenly spoke, "Peter, he had everything and then…_nothing_. I know…I know what that's like, to have your entire world disillusion you. It leaves you….**lost**. My Dad, he let me down and I…I just walked away. I did what this kid did. I made my own way in the world by any methods that I could."

But Peter shook his head. "No, you're nothing like him, Neal. You never physically attacked anyone. You never inflicted the hurt that you feel on others. That's not who you are. You never lost your heart. So whatever comparisons you're making to this kid, just stop."

"You said before that I let you down…"

Peter cringed, wished that he hadn't flung those words at Neal, that he hadn't been blinded by Fowler's proof that Neal stole the diamonds, hadn't denied the clamoring in his heart that told him Neal wouldn't betray the trust he had in him. "I was wrong. I let you down by not believing you." But a second later he pointed a threatening finger at Neal. "I swear, though, if you ever pull a suicidal, reckless stunt like jumping out of a three story window or punching your fist through a window again, I'll let you rot at your desk for a month where the most excitement you'll see is Jones making coffee. That clear?"

"Crystal," Neal returned, a smile beginning to soften the anguish in his features. He didn't even resist when Peter steered him toward the door. And when his FBI partner snagged his hat off the couch and settled it onto his head, he covered his surprise like the pro he was.

Heading down the stairs, Peter's unwavering grip on his elbow ensuring that he didn't suffer a misstep, Neal realized that, having only Peter for support, it wasn't fate's way of punishing him for his wrong decisions, it was her way of reminding him that, even the most wayward of sons were still worthy of love.

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The End

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Have a great day!

Cheryl W.


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